Posts tagged ‘Singapore’

China National Bluestar has agreed to buy solar panel maker REC Solar (RECSOL.OL) for 4.34 billion Norwegian crowns ($640 million), planning to combine it with another Norwegian asset it picked up in 2011.

Bluestar said on Monday it would pay a 15.9 percent premium to the stock’s last close in a deal unanimously recommended by REC Solar’s board of directors and would combine it with its solar grade silicon maker Elkem.

The deal comes nearly a year and a half after REC (REC.OL) spun off its solar panel arm, moving its headquarters to Singapore from Norway and effectively putting the company up for sale.

Narendra Modi has proven once again how important it is to be lucky in politics. In the spring, he was India’s opposition leader, running for prime minister by focusing on the government’s mismanagement of the economy. He had plenty of ammunition: The coalition led by the Congress Party had presided over years of corruption scandals and stalled reforms—and also had to contend with a growing budget deficit fueled by soaring prices for oil and other imported commodities.

During the campaign, Modi said he wanted to cut back on the costly subsidies the government offered millions of Indians to cushion the blow of those soaring prices. Petroleum subsidies account for one-quarter of India’s 2.6 trillion rupee ($42.4 billion) subsidies bill. But after he won in a landslide, Modi’s first budget (which his finance minister announced in July), was a modest plan that left the subsidies untouched.

That left observers unsure as to whether Modi was backing away from the politically difficult task of making the cuts. “We can either trust that the government will deliver price hikes as the year progresses,” Mirza Baig, head of foreign exchange and interest rate strategy at BNP Paribas in Singapore, wrote in a report after the budget announcement in July. “Or we can be more cynical and suggest that the Modi administration intends to continue the practice of rolling forward subsidy expenditure to next year.”

For the first time since Boston consultancy Bain & Co. began tracking the global luxury market, overall sales of luxury goods declined in mainland China over the first eight months of 2014. The dip was small—sales dropped 1 percent—but significant because of the outsize hopes brands from Prada (1913:HK) to Rolls-Royce (RL/:LN) have placed on wooing China’s socially ambitious spenders.

In the past year, the number of billionaires in China jumped by more than a fifth (from 157 to 190), according to Switzerland’s UBS (UBSN:VX) and Singapore research firm Wealth-X. But spending on luxury goods within mainland China has been squeezed by two significant trends: the continuing austerity and anticorruption drive led by President Xi Jinping and the growing preference for China’s jet set to snatch up expensive handbags and watches while on overseas trips (in part to avoid pricey import taxes at home).

Bain forecasts that overall global luxury sales will rise 5 percent in 2014, with the largest increases expected in the U.S. and Japan (at 5 percent and 10 percent, respectively). Some portion of that spending comes from Chinese tourists in New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, but the report doesn’t attempt to estimate how much. Bloomberg Businessweek has previously reported on the growing market for luxury train service in Japan, where household wealth is rising more quickly than at any time in the past five years and seniors want to enjoy their golden years.

Last November, China announced the loosening of its restrictive one-child population policy: Couples would soon be permitted to have two children so long as one parent was an only child. Government planners predicted that roughly half of China’s 11 million eligible couples would chose to have a second child within five years, and investors predicted a boom in sales of diapers, baby formula, and educational toys in China.

The policy change has been rolled out in 29 of China’s 33 provinces and regions, yet by the end of May only 271,000 applications for permission to have a second child had been submitted. Many came from older mothers concerned not to lose their chance. At an agency in Beijing’s Tuanjiehu neighborhood that connects parents with maternity nannies, staff said that the majority of requests pertaining to second children came from women in their late 30s.

Six months into the new policy is still too early to judge the ultimate impact. But experts now express more modest expectations. “Every metric thus far indicates the loosening isn’t leading to a baby boom,” says Mei Fong, author of a forthcoming book on China’s population policies. With rising costs of urban living, Chinese couples are deliberately limiting family size for reasons similar to those depressing fertility in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Western countries.

It follows the November launch of a spacecraft to Mars, the first such attempt at interplanetary exploration by an Asian country.

The cost of launching the five satellites wasn’t revealed. India’s Mars satellite, dubbed Mangalyaan, or Mars craft, in Hindi, cost $73 million. Speaking at Monday’s launch, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted that amount is less than what it took to produce “Gravity,” the blockbuster Hollywood movie about space. “Gravity” cost about $100 million to make.

Hua’s comment came ahead of the 11th joint working group meeting between China and ASEAN on the implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct (DoC) of Parties in the South China Sea. The meeting will be held from next Tuesday to Wednesday in Bali, Indonesia. “China is ready to work with the ASEAN for comprehensive and effective implementation of the declaration and steadily push forward consultations on a CoC,” Hua said. Maritime cooperation on navigation security and joint search and rescue will be discussed during the meeting, Hua said. She called for favorable conditions for the implementation of the DoC and formulation of a CoC to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea. China and ASEAN officials met in March in Singapore for the 10th joint working group meeting on the implementation of the DoC. via China, ASEAN to have South China Sea talks – Xinhua | English.news.cn.

Singapore Airlines Ltd.C6L.SG +0.68% will be the first commercial carrier to operate Airbus A380 superjumbos into India next month, after authorities there lifted a years-long ban on the world’s biggest jetliner.

The first A380 delivered to Singapore Airlines arrives at the Airbus Delivery Centre in Toulouse Blagnac, southern France, in this file picture taken October 15, 2007. Reuters

Singapore’s flag carrier says starting from May 30 it will deploy the double-decker A380, which seats up to 471 passengers, on daily flights to New Delhi and Mumbai, India’s two largest aviation hubs.

Those flights will replace two existing daily services currently flown by smaller Boeing 777 aircraft that are timed about 90 minutes apart, helping boost cost efficiencies for the airline. Another daily 777 service to both cities will remain unchanged, according to the airline.

Major airlines have been lobbying to fly the A380 into India since the aircraft’s commercial launch more than six years ago. Analysts say it will help alleviate worsening congestion at India’s major international gateways, particularly since the number of passengers is expected to rise in the coming years.

India prevented the A380’s entry for years because the government feared that foreign carriers would gobble up passenger traffic from state-owned Air India and other domestic carriers using the large planes. None of India’s carriers operate the jumbo jet.

India’s civil-aviation ministry finally lifted the unofficial ban in January, permitting A380 flights to and from New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore as part of efforts to liberalize the aviation sector and revive growth.

Nine of the 10 airlines that currently operate A380s have scheduled flights into India, with at least five having expressed interest in flying the large jet into the country.

Qin’s comment came ahead of the 10th joint working group meeting between China and ASEAN on the implementation of the declaration on the conduct (DOC) of parties in the South China Sea. The meeting will be held on March 18 in Singapore.

“China is ready to work with ASEAN for comprehensive and effective implementation of DOC and steadily push forward consultations on COC,” Qin said.

Practical maritime cooperation will also be touched upon during the meeting, Qin said.

Qin called for favorable conditions for the implementation of DOC and formulation of COC to maintain peace and stability on the South China Sea.

China and ASEAN officials met last September in Suzhou, in east China’s Jiangsu Province, for the 6th China-ASEAN senior officials’ meeting and the 9th joint working group meeting on the implementation of DOC.

India has secured a record 207 billion rupees ($3.4 billion) of investment in port projects after it deregulated tariffs.

The nation has awarded bids for thirty ports in the year ending March 31, Shipping Secretary Vishwapati Trivedi said in an interview. The value is more than three times greater than projects awarded in fiscal 2013, he said. The projects will add 217.6 million metric tons of annual cargo-handling capacity, according to the Ministry of Shipping.

The bids will ease congestion at Indian ports where the average turnaround time for ships was about three days in 2013, compared with about one day in Singapore and Shanghai, according to a report by Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers Ltd. They will also help India meet a 2020 target of more than doubling its port capacity to 3,200 million metric tons at an investment of 2.87 trillion rupees.